


And the Antichrist Makes Three

by AstroGirl



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2020-11-15 03:11:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20859263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: Crowley didn't exactlyintendto kidnap the Antichrist.  It just sort of happened.  And now they're stuck with him.  Over the next eleven years, Aziraphale frets a lot, Crowley tries to play it cool, and Adam grows up incapable of being surprised by anything at all.





	1. This Is a Great Idea, and Everything Will Be Perfectly Fine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prix/gifts).

> Written for Multifandom Tropefest for Prix, for the prompt "accidental baby acquisition," although the "accident" in this case is basically, well, Crowley. Rated Teen and Up for swearing and non-explicit sex.

The truth is, Crowley panics.

He's spent the last six thousand years not thinking about Armageddon, except in the most abstract possible way, as the sort of vague and distant goal you're meant to clap dutifully for when people give speeches about it before getting back to more immediate and interesting matters, like whether there's anything good on TV and whether you can fix it if there is (reality television having been one of his best ideas to date).

But now here it is. Armageddon, in his hands. In his car. A ticking time bomb in a basket, counting its way down to doomsday.

He isn't ready. Bless it all, he _isn't ready_. There are so many things he hasn't done yet. He's not sure what they are, but that's the _point_, isn't it? The humans are always inventing new things. Fun things. They've been promising him flying cars for nearly a century now, and he doesn't think they're going to manage them in the next eleven years. Not that he isn't loyal to the Bentley, but come on. Flying cars! How can he miss out on that? On any of it?

He takes a corner viciously, vindictively hard, and from inside the basket the imminent end of everything worth caring about lets out a protesting little cry. Crowley bites down hard on his lip to keep from joining in.

At the convent, he storms past the man who seems to be trying to talk to him. Doesn't bother asking which room he's meant to go to. He'll find it. It's Destiny or something. There's no choice in this at all, is there? 

He just wants to get it over with. Swallow down the pill or rip off the bandage or whatever metaphor it is people who can't miraculously heal themselves would use, so he can put tonight behind him and spend the next eleven years getting drunk before all the alcohol is gone forever.

The Satanic nun greets him with a smile he doesn't return, says some inane things about the Antichrist's little toesy-woesies that he doesn't bother responding to.

Admittedly, the baby _does_ have cute little toesy-woesies, if you like that sort of thing. He has a cute, round, little human face, too, that you'd think was sweet and innocent if you didn't know any better. Crowley supposes it must be a better form to infiltrate humanity with than a snake.

He lingers for a while, watching as the nun retrieves the human baby and prepares to substitute the Destroyer of Alcohol in its place. Because he's a conscientious demon who likes to make sure a job is done right, of course. Not because he can't look away from that stupid baby and its stupid lying face. 

He can't, though. He stares into its wide, untroubled human baby eyes, and all he can see is _the end_. Including his own personal end in the form of a smiting by Heaven if he's lucky, or an eternity of Hell if he's not. No more concerts, no more highways blurring scenically past his car windows, no more baiting internet trolls, no finding interesting new things to do with his hair. No more wonderful little what-will-they-they-think-of-next inventions. No more leisurely lunches with...

He can't do it. He _can't_. The realization floods through him with a combination of terror and relief he would have thought would cancel each other out, but somehow really, _really_ don't.

He snaps his fingers. The nun stops her prattling, the baby his gurgling. The world goes quiet.

He switches the babies. He snaps.

The world begins to move onward towards its future again.

"I'll just take this adorable little Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Prince of This World, and Lord of Darkness to his new mummy and daddy now," the nun says brightly, her hands on the cart, or the bassinet, or whatever it is that's now holding the perfectly ordinary human infant.

"Yeah. Yeah, right." He watches his own hands pick up the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Prince of This World, and Lord of Darkness. _What is this? _he thinks at them. _What the heaven are you _doing_?_ But they don't listen to him. The baby disappears back into the basket.

"So, I'll just," he says, casually. "Dispose of this one, then."

The nun blinks. "Oh," she says. "I thought we were meant to deal with that?"

"Nah. 'Sokay. I got it." A voice in the back of his brain gibbers at him wildly. Something about this being entirely too much of a lie even for a demon.

"Oh. All right. What..." She glances down at the basket. "What are you going to do with him?"

He grins his biggest, evilest grin. "Trust me, you don't want to know."

_I do!_ gibbers the voice. _I want to know! What _are_ we going to do with it?_

"Oh," she says again. "Well, all right then. I suppose you know best. I mean, you are the demon after all. Well, wherever you're going from here, I hope you have a good--"

He cuts her off. "Yeah, yeah. Uh, Hail Satan."

A cheery "Oh, yes, Hail Satan!" follows him out the door, and then he's in the Bentley, shaking, and tearing down the road, shaking, and pulling up in front of a bookshop. Shaking.

**

There's a light in the bookshop, a warm glow spilling through the windows and out into the street. It's well past midnight now, but Aziraphale never sleeps. Never puts out his light. He's always here, no matter how late the hour.

In the now-motionless Bentley, in the dark, Crowley looks down through dark glasses at the face of the Antichrist. Unsurprisingly, he looks dark.

Crowley should just kill him. He knows that. It'd be the moral thing to do, even, killing one person to save, well, everything. Not that he's supposed to do the moral thing, but killing babies is pretty evil, right? So either way he's covered.

But he can't. He just... _can't_.

Satan, but he's a shitty demon.

Maybe Aziraphale will do it. Heaven has no problem killing kids, after all. It's kind of their thing, even. Maybe the angel will do it so he doesn't have to.

Probably not, though. Almost certainly probably not. But, bless it, he needs someone to share this colossal mistake he's just made with. Preferably someone with a well-stocked drinks cabinet.

He gets out of the car and slings the basket over his arm, jauntily, as if he's about to go on a picnic.

Aziraphale will have an idea. Or at least be good for some moral support and perspective. Yeah. Yeah. It will be _fine_.

**

"You did _what_?" says Aziraphale. He looks more shocked than Crowley ever remembers seeing him. Nice to know that after six thousand years people can still surprise you.

"You heard me," he says, and turns away for a moment to help himself to a bottle of Aziraphale's second-best scotch. He pours himself a glass, downs it in one gulp, and pours another. 

Normally, Aziraphale would tut at him for this crime against good alcohol, but he's still too busy looking appalled to look disapproving. Small mercies. 

"You _kidnapped_ the Antichrist?"

"It was an accident," Crowley mutters, and pours the angel a glass. 

Aziraphale takes it without even looking at it. "You kidnapped the Antichrist! And brought him to my bookshop!"

"What was I supposed to do? I couldn't leave him where he was. He'd grow up and end everything! And I _like_ everything. Well, I like some things. And those things are part of everything."

"Yes, but you can't just--" Aziraphale is turning his glass anxiously in his hands. For a moment, Crowley almost thinks he's going to let some of it spill.

Crowley interrupts him. "So do you, angel. You know you do. You don't want it to end any more than I do. Think about it. No more sushi. No more chocolate mousse. No more nights at the theater. No more _books_. There'll be no one left to write any more. You can't tell me anyone writes books in heaven, not good ones. My lot gets all the best writers. Always has. You'll have eternity, on and on and on and _on_, forever, and before it's even properly got started, you'll have run out of things to read."

The look on Aziraphale's face, before he gets it under control, is one of genuine dismay. Crowley hates putting that expression there, feels a pang of guilt like a pain behind his eyes, but how does that saying go? _When the devil drives_...

"Well then." Aziraphale takes a swallow of scotch, big enough that by rights he ought to be tutting at himself for it now. "What on earth do you want me to do about it?"

Crowley looks into the basket and down into the face of their dilemma. The baby's eyes are shut, his face peacefully relaxed in sleep. A small bubble of spit bursts between his lips.

"You could..." Crowley licks his lips and forces himself to keep going. "You could make the problem go away," he says.

"Oh, thank you, that's very helpful. I _was_ hoping for a slightly more specific suggestion." The angel drains the rest of his whiskey.

"No, I meant you could... You could kill him."

"What! No, I can't."

"You could, though."

"I..." Aziraphale takes a step closer to the basket, and stares down into it. The baby makes a small sleepy noise. "I don't think I could," he says, soft and halting.

"Yeah. Me either." He takes Aziraphale's glass from his unresisting hand and pours them both another.

"I suppose I could... I could talk to Heaven? Ask them for advice? I could leave your name out of it. Or tell them I stole it from you. Thwarted your wiles."

Crowley feels some vaguely unfamiliar emotion rising up in him. He thinks it might be pity. "And what do you think they'd do, angel? The end of the world is meant to be part of the Plan. I'd wager Heaven is looking forward to it just as much as Hell is."

"Surely... Surely not." But he says it without conviction. Crowley always both loves and hates it when he makes that look of doubt appear on Aziraphale's face.

"Or if not, if they did want to stop Armageddon from happening, they'd probably just order you to kill it."

Aziraphale's eyes widen, but he doesn't reply, doesn't argue, because they both know he can't. Instead he takes another drink. His hand shakes a little, just for a moment.

There are times when Crowley fantasizes about reliving he worst day of his immortal life, of standing in front of the host of angels, spitting in their faces, screaming _You can't fire me, I quit!_, and flinging his own bloody self down into the Pit.

He looks away from Aziraphale's face, giving him a moment, and retrieves several more bottles from the shelf.

"Well, we can't just _keep_ him," Aziraphale says finally, as Crowley lines the bottles up on the table.

Crowley looks up at him, and whatever part of his expression is visible around his glasses, it brings Aziraphale up short. "Oh dear," he says. "Oh, no. Crowley, no, no, no."

"Well, I can't take him _back_," Crowley says. "Hell thinks that other kid's the Antichrist. They'll be _watching_ him. And, all right, they're pretty lax, I might get lucky, but if I don't..." He shrugs, and Aziraphale goes pale. Pal_er_.

"Oh, no, Crowley, they'll... They'll destroy you!'

"Nah, don't worry about that," Crowley says, with a nonchalant fling of his head, a dismissive twist of his mouth.

"What... Really?" Aziraphale almost looks hopeful, and suddenly the joke feels even less funny than it did when he started.

Crowley finishes it, anyway. "Yeah. Probably take them centuries to get around to killing me. It's the torture you really have to worry about."

"Oh. Oh, _Crowley_." Aziraphale runs a hand across his face, tugs his fingers through the white-blond fluff of his hair.

For a few moments, they drink in silence. 

Then, Aziraphale says, "Maybe we could find someone to adopt him."

"Oh sure, sure. Foist off the Antichrist on some other unsuspecting humans. That'll go well." Crowley stares miserably into his empty glass, as if it's offended him. It has. It has offended him. He opens another bottle.

"Well, if we can't kill him and we can't take him back, then what exactly are you suggesting?"

Crowley looks at him. He makes a gesture with the hand holding the bottle, but even he isn't certain what it means.

Aziraphale apparently interprets it somehow, though. "Well, don't look at me. What do I know about babies? Besides, he'd... He'd get grubby little handprints all over my books!"

"You think I know any more about human babies than you do?" says Crowley, who knows quite a lot about human babies from having lived on Earth since slightly before they were invented, none of which he thinks really quite _counts_ in this situation.

"Well, you're better with them than I am. Remember how good you were with Moses?"

Crowley remembers helping to save the kid from drowning after the guardian angel who was supposed to be guaranteeing him a safe trip downriver was delayed by an appointment with some honeyed wheat cakes. He'd nearly got in trouble for that after Moses' career really took off, when someone in Hell had gone poking into his past and somehow ferreted out that detail. He'd managed to spin it in his favor, though. No Moses, no tablets -- well, as far as any of them could prove, anyway -- and there is nothing in the world that makes temptation easier than having the rules written down. It's practically daring you to break them. In the end, he'd come out looking not just brilliant and dedicated, but downright prescient. Not that he felt all that great about it, given everything that happened between the kid floating down the river and the man walking down the mountain.

Crowley mutters something about this not being the same sort of situation at all, but he's not listening to himself, because he's busy having an idea. Something about it not having to be the same sort of situation at all. Especially if they can avoid anyone setting any bushes on fire.

"Wait," he says. "Wait."

Aziraphale waits, looking at him expectantly.

"Wait," he says again, because whatever the idea is still isn't quite forming properly in the starting-to-be-drunken haze of his mind. 

"Yes? I'm waiting," says Aziraphale with exaggerated patience. 

Crowley starts talking, interested to see precisely what's going to come out of his mouth. "The Antichrist is supposed to be evil, right? Spawn of Satan and all that?"

"Yes?" Aziraphale's patience is now decidedly less exaggerated. One might even call it "thin."

"No, no, wait, I'm thinking! OK, so, he's supposed to grow up evil. To end the world. But, look, angel. _I_ like the world, right? _You _like the world. What if... What if we made sure _he_ likes the world? Loves it, even?"

Aziraphale blinks. "But, surely, if he's meant to be evil, he won't be capable of that?"

Crowley lets out an annoyed hiss. "Aziraphale, _I'm_ meant to be evil. And let me tell you, it's a lot less fun if you don't have a world to be evil in!"

"I don't think you're really very evil, you know," says Aziraphale, kindly.

"Sssshut up! Lisssten! The Antichrist, he's, all right, he's the Antichrist, but he's also a _person_. Or he will be. He has to be. He's meant to be part of humanity, until he isn't. Maybe we can make him--"

"Less evil?" Aziraphale cuts in, and that's not what quite Crowley was going to say, but the angel sounds almost hopeful. So he goes with it.

"Why not? You could influence him that way. Probably couldn't help it, really. And I'd be there to balance it out. My demonic nature, your angelic one... Maybe they'd cancel each other out, let us bring him up as a plain old boring human. If we do it right, maybe that's all he ever is. A nice human boy who grows up thinking, hey, the world isn't such a bad place."

"So that when the time comes," Aziraphale breathes, "he won't want to end it."

"We can hope."

"You're... You're suggesting we raise him. The two of us. Crowley, that's _insane_." But he's weakening. Crowley can _feel_ it.

"Do you have a better idea?"

"Well, I..." But before Aziraphale can think of a gracious way to say he has no faintest fucking hint of a better idea, a sharp, shrill noise cuts him off.

The Antichrist is crying.

"Oh no," says Aziraphale. "What do you think he wants?"

"Dunno," says Crowley, walking over to peer into the basket. "Probably hungry?"

"Well, you're the one who wants to raise him. Do something!"

Crowley, who had perhaps begun to be soothed by the balm of his own cleverness, feels panic rising in him again. Right, babies. Feeding babies. He's seen thousands of humans feeding their babies. What is it they usually do again? He tries to shake the anxious, whiskey-filled haze from his mind without taking the radical step of actually sobering himself up.

"Breasts?" he says. 

"What?" Aziraphale sounds shocked, as the Enemy of Bookshop Silence begins to wail louder.

"I think I'm going to need breasts." Oh, Satan. He's not prepared for this. He'll have to change his whole wardrobe. He'll have to...

"Can't you use goat's milk?" Aziraphale sounds uncertain. "Or perhaps a cow?"

Realization gallops through Crowley's mind, with relief hard on its heels. "Wait. Wait. They have stuff for this now. What do you call it? Formula!" He holds out a hand, expecting what he needs to be there, and gratefully shoves the resulting bottle into the Antichrist's mouth.

Silence falls. The Lord of Darkness's chubby little face relaxes into quiet contentment.

"Easy," says Crowley, ignoring the gibbering voice in the back of his mind as it tries to make its return. "See? We've got this, angel. _Easy_."

Aziraphale groans.

Crowley decides he's going to take that as a "yes."


	2. Tick... Tick... Tick...

Raising the child, just as Aziraphale had feared, is a difficult and messy business. He tries very hard to refrain from saying "I told you so" to Crowley, who is... Well, he is trying. Although it would be helpful if he didn't disappear every night to sleep and leave Aziraphale alone with the baby. Just because _he_ doesn't sleep, that doesn't mean he doesn't have anything else to do. 

And the baby has so very, very many needs. He's so... _corporeal_. So human. One day he might have the power to end the world, but right now he's worryingly helpless. He's not like Aziraphale and Crowley. He can't live on the mere expectation that his body will keep functioning. He needs food. _All the time. _("Look who's talking," Crowley says when Aziraphale gives voice to his distress on this matter. "I_ like_ to, Crowley," he answers. "I don't _need_ to. It's different. He'll actually discorporate if we don't feed him enough. It's terrifying!")

And as for the _other_ functions of a human body. Well. After six millennia spent among an often not very hygienic humanity, neither of them is exactly a stranger to their various excretions. But Aziraphale had hoped his days of dealing with such things on a daily basis were over, now that people have stopped emptying chamber pots out of windows. At least the mess is easy enough to miracle away. There's never any danger that Heaven will notice or object to a miracle meant to clean something. Heaven likes things clean.

More upsetting are the times the baby cries (and cries, and _cries_) even though there's nothing wrong with him. No mess, no hunger. No illness or injuries, either. Aziraphale can be sure of that, healing being an art that comes quite instinctively to angels. No, he simply appears to _want_ something, something they aren't giving him. Or else to not want something they _are_ giving him, but Aziraphale has no idea what.

"I can try to intimidate him out of it," Crowley says mildly, the third or fourth time it happens. "Works for my plants."

"I've seen your plants," Aziraphale says. "The poor things are terrified. We're not doing that to that to the child. It might scar him for life." Aziraphale has begun reading books on child-rearing. Some of them are even quite modern. He hasn't got very far, as there are so many other volumes demanding his attention, but he's fairly certain none of them advocate screaming and threats as a parenting strategy.

"They're healthy, and they don't complain. Anyway, would it be such a bad thing, if he grew up being scared of demons? We don't want him taking Hell's side."

Aziraphale bounces the baby in his arms while he thinks about this. He also tries making some desperate shushing noises, all of which are stubbornly ignored. "He's sort of a demon himself, though, isn't he? If he's the Son of Satan. Or, well, clearly he's not, but he _comes_ from a demon, at least. I don't think self-loathing is a quality one wants to instill in a child." He's pretty sure there's something about that in one of the books somewhere, too.

"Whatever he is," says Crowley, "he's definitely not a demon. Demons don't scream like that unless someone gives them a reason to. Usually another demon."

As if objecting to this, the child wails louder.

Crowley makes an annoyed sound. "Armageddon might be preferable to having to listen to this all day," he says. "Oh, give him here, angel."

Aziraphale hesitates for just a moment before handing the baby over. It's not that he doesn't trust Crowley, of course, but as he himself has just pointed out, he _is_ a demon.

"It's a pity," he sighs as Crowley takes the screaming infant, "that we can't just _make_ him be quiet." But they've agreed from the beginning that while miracling the baby clean or dry or tucked in under a blanket is one thing, trying to impose their will on the Antichrist directly might well have disturbing consequences, and is far too dangerous to risk. He supposes they could simply miracle away the sound, but then what if the child actually needs something and they aren't able to hear?

Crowley sighs and rolls his eyes. Then he does something Aziraphale was most decidedly not expecting. He begins to sing.

Aziraphale doesn't recognize the tune, although it's very catchy, but he knows the language. It's Latin. A dialect from some time in the Republican period, he thinks. It's been a very long time since he's heard it. He's struck, not for the first time, by the realization of just how much time he and Crowley have spent apart over the millennia, no matter how constant the demon's presence in his life seems to have been. Where did he learn a Roman lullaby? Was he in Italy tempting housewives while Aziraphale was... off doing whatever it was he was doing at the time? He can't quite recall just now.

Crowley's face looks like he's trying very hard to be "cool" or "ironic" or whatever word he uses for that sort of thing these days, but his voice is unexpectedly sweet. And it's working. The baby's cries slowly dwindle into whimpers, then into silence, and his tiny eyelids drift slowly closed.

Aziraphale doesn't even mind that the song calls blasphemously on the false gods Juno and Morpheus. He merely watches, rapt.

"Shut up," Crowley says when he's finished, when the baby is snoring gently. "It's the only one I know. Had it stuck in my head for millennia."

"I didn't say anything." He wants to say something. He wants to ask questions, but the moment doesn't seem right. Crowley looks so satisfied, underneath a thin layer of embarrassment. And the baby is sweetly asleep. He doesn't want to spoil it.

Crowley, of course, does it for him. "There you go," he says. "That's a good little Angel of the Bottomless Pit."

"I do wish you wouldn't call him things like that," says Aziraphale.

"I call 'em like I see 'em," Crowley says, and gently lays the baby down in the bassinet they've miracled up for him.

Aizraphale, relaxing into the blessed silence, decides not to argue about it now. He's too busy wondering if maybe, just maybe, they might make this work after all.

**

Crowley keeps calling the kid things like "Angel of the Bottomless Pit," because he thinks it's funny, or "the Antichrist," because that's what he is, and Aziraphale keeps calling him "the baby" or "my dear," depending on which one of them he's talking to, and that works well enough that the baby is three months old before it occurs to either of them that he probably ought to have an actual _name_.

"He started crying while I had _customers_, Crowley," Aziraphale says, a faint whine in his voice that Crowley can't help thinking makes him sound a little like the baby himself, "so I had to go and fetch him, and then one of them asked me what his name was! I had to pretend I'd suddenly remembered something terribly important in the back room and not come out until they left."

Crowley finishes stepping through the door and pauses for a second to catch up. He wasn't quite prepared for this conversation to start before he'd even properly entered the shop. "You do that half the time with customers, anyway," he says. Abandonment being Aziraphale's third-favorite customer-alienating tactic, right after Significant Glaring and suddenly deciding to be closed.

"That isn't the point!" 

"You could have just made up a name?" Crowley suggests as the door swings itself closed behind him.

"I couldn't think of any. Besides, names are _important_. Especially for... Well, in a situation like this. What if I gave him a name and he hated it? No, I think this is something we ought to discuss together."

Crowley shrugs and saunters towards the back of the shop to sprawl across Aziraphale's sofa. The angel follows him, looking like this is not a subject he's going to drop any time soon. 

"I hardly think he's going to end the world just because you name him Aloysius or something, angel."

Aziraphale sits in the chair across from him. His back is ramrod-straight, his hands folded neatly in front of him. "What's wrong with Aloysius? As saints' names go, I'd think it might be rather appropriate. Well, not the dying of plague bit, but as I recall he did forfeit the right to inherit his father's status when he joined the priesthood. That might be in the right sort of spirit, don't you think?"

Crowley groans. Clearly he is going to be forced to participate in this conversation one way or another. "Not Aloysius." He pauses for a moment, and grins. "How about Damien?"

Aziraphale looks dubious. "I'm not sure how I feel about that one, but if you like it..."

"Never mind," Crowley says, waving a hand at him. "It's not as funny if you don't get the reference. Really don't know why I thought you would."

"I do wish you would take this seriously."

"Fine, fine! I'm taking it seriously. What do you suggest? Something boring and Biblical, no doubt."

"Biblical. Well, that's a thought."

Crowley makes a disparaging sound, which Aziraphale completely ignores.

"I suppose it ought to be a particularly human name," says Aziraphale. "Considering."

"Bob," says Crowley flippantly. "You know where you are with a Bob. Hard to imagine Bob destroying the world."

"Oh, I know! What about Adam? Hard to get more human than the first one." 

"I dunno," says Crowley, considering this. "He was a bit..." Crowley waves a hand in a way meant to suggest any number of human faults, especially a notable lack of intelligence. There were reasons he'd had an easier time getting to Eve. She'd understood what he was on about, for starters.

"He was lovely," says Aziraphale, more out of loyalty, Crowley thinks, than genuine agreement. "Really, what do you think?"

It does seem fitting somehow. Stupidly fitting. Entirely too on-the-nose fitting. But Aziraphale does look so happy to have come up with it. 

"Fine," he says.

"Oh, good!' Aziraphale makes a happy little motion that could only be described as a "wiggle." Crowley immediately decides not to describe it. "Oh, but he'll need a surname, as well."

"Ugh, why does he keep _needing_ things?" Crowley adjusts his sprawl into an expressive slouch, one hand thrown up above his head.

"Do you think he should have yours, or mine? Or we could hyphenate. Crowley-Fell?"

Crowley freezes, unable, for a moment, to quite believe what he's just heard. He tilts his head at the angel, slides his glasses down his nose, and gives him a hard yellow stare.

"Oh. Oh dear. That _is_ a bit awkward, isn't it. Sorry. Fell-Crowley? Would that... Would that be less objectionable? Or perhaps we could..." 

He seems genuinely upset. The cold feeling in Crowley's gut immediately melts into something annoyingly affectionate. "No," he says. "That's fine."

Aziraphale beams at him. 

From the bassinet across the room there's a soft stirring, and a small gurgling sound. As if the baby is responding to being given a name. Stupid thought. He isn't a hellhound, is he?

"He's probably hungry," says Aziraphale. "It's about time to feed him. Again."

"I'll do it." Crowley shakes himself off the couch and walks over to pick the child up.

_Adam Fell-Crowley_, he thinks, looking down into the baby's tiny half-formed face. Why should putting a name to this make it suddenly feel more _real_? Why should putting his chosen name and Aziraphale's fake human one to it make it feel...

Well, he's honestly not quite sure _what_ it makes him feel. But whatever it is, he doesn't trust it at all.

**

"Crowley, we have to talk!"

Aziraphale is aware that he's making something of a habit of ambushing Crowley like this as soon as he walks in the bookshop door, but, if only he were _here_ more often, it wouldn't be necessary, would it? And that may, in fact, be part of the problem.

Crowley grunts a little. Which might or might not be intended as encouragement to continue, but Aziraphale doesn't very much care.

"We can't carry on like this, Crowley. We simply _cannot_." Aziraphale's been going over this speech in his mind since sometime last night, but it emerges now not as a carefully prepared argument, but as an uncontrollable torrent of words. "This really is no place for a child. I tried to tell you that, from the beginning! But now that he's learned to crawl, he's getting into _everything_. I caught him tearing pages from a beautiful 1780 edition of _Quixote_ today. It took a miracle to save it, and you _know_ I don't like doing that to my books."

"Uh-huh," says Crowley, still standing just inside the door. "Well, I--"

"And he's growing so _fast_. He's going to need all sorts of human things soon. He's going to need a _toilet_, Crowley. I don't own a toilet. I have nowhere to put one. And I'd get people coming in wanting to _use_ it."

"Funnily enough--" says Crowley, but Aziraphale is determined to finish having his say. He hasn't even got to the truly important part yet.

"And Gabriel was just here. Last night, right after you left, he came by, to 'check up,' he said. He didn't see the baby, thank the Almighty, but what if he'd started crying? How would I have explained it? I know you said that Adam has that, that anti-detection field, or whatever you called it, but that doesn't do us any good, does it, if he's right here in my shop and Heaven can just stumble across him by accident."

"You--" says Crowley.

"And, I _know_," Aziraphale barrels ahead, unwilling to let Crowley jump in and twist this conversation into whatever direction he wants it go. "I know that the poor thing starts crying every time we take him to your flat, but at least Hell usually prefers to contact you via your stereophonic system, or your television, or whatever it is they use, rather than _randomly dropping by_, and perhaps if you would just _redecorate_\--"

"_Angel_," says Crowley, and this time there's something in his voice that brings Aziraphale's tirade to a halt. Well, he was nearly done, anyway. He squares himself and waits for the argument he knows is coming.

But instead, Crowley holds up a piece of paper, apparently one he's had in his hand the entire time. He gives Aziraphale a very strange look.

Well, all right. If he wants Aziraphale to ask, he'll ask. "What is that?"

"Funny story," says Crowley, in a maddening, leisurely drawl. "There I was, outside your bookshop, and this woman came up to me. American, glasses, lots of hair, interesting fashion choices for someone in the twenty-first century. I'm guessing you know her?"

"It's not ringing any bells," says Aziraphale, mystified right out of his rant. (Oh dear, was _that_ Crowley's plan? Damn his wiles!)

"Well, she gave me this." He brings the paper closer. Aziraphale peers at it. It appears to be some sort of legal document, but he's having trouble making sense of it.

"It's a deed," says Crowley. "House in the country. With our names on it." 

So it is. Right there in stark, bureaucratic black ink: "Anthony J. Crowley and A. Z. Fell." Owners. 

"What?" says Aziraphale. "I don't... What?"

Crowley looks as confused as he is. "She said someone named Agnes Nutter sent her." 

"_What?_" Without thinking, Aziraphale grabs the deed from Crowley's hand as he pushes past him and sprints out the door. He looks around frantically, but there's no one fitting Crowley's description anywhere.

He stops, finally, stock-still in the middle of the pavement, and stares down at the paper with his lips parted in wonder and all the words driven right out of his head, until Crowley comes to get him.

**

Crowley sits on the floor of their new house with a squirming Antichrist on his lap, trying to sort through his vinyl collection.

Behind him, Aziraphale is fussing over his bookshelves. Nothing new there. He's been at it all day, unpacking books and moving them around and muttering to himself. Honestly, if his first objection to keeping the kid at the shop was out of concern for his books, Crowley doesn't see how bringing half of them along is meant to help anything. But he knows better than to say so, at least not until he happens to be in the mood for some recreational angel-taunting.

"I do hope this works," Aziraphale says, and Crowley glances up to see that he's no longer addressing the shelves, but is now looking right at him. 

"You worry too much, angel," says Crowley, over the voice in the back of his head that's trying to scream at him that maybe neither of them is worrying quite _enough_. He's got very good at shouting that voice down over the past few months. "They won't find us here, I promise."

And they've done what they can to make to make sure that even the way they're dropping off the occult/ethereal radar won't be suspicious. Crowley isn't too worried about Hell, anyway. They can still talk to him, but it's usually only voice on their end, and they never care very much about where he is at the time. Which has been the cause of more than a little embarrassment in his life, so he figures it's only fair it's working to his advantage now. Angels looking for Aziraphale might be trickier, but they've got the bookshop miracled up to alert them if any drop by. They'll get away with it. Probably. 

"If you say so," says Aziraphale, sounding like he wants to believe he's been convinced.

"Anyway, what are you worried they're going to be suspicious _of_? It's not like if Heaven can't find you for ten minutes they're going to slap their foreheads and go, 'Oh no, he must be shacked up with a demon secretly raising the Antichrist!'"

"Yes, you're right, of course," says Aziraphale. He actually looks relieved, _See?_, Crowley tells his inner voice. _That argument was totally convincing! Everything really is fine._

"Of course. When am I ever not?" He ignores Aziraphale's answering laugh and turns back to his music collection. He slides a Velvet Underground album he accidentally left in the car a few decades ago out of its place in the stack and re-files it under Q. 

He pauses to contemplate suggesting they break for lunch -- their dining options are considerably more limited in this tiny village, but he's found a little Indian place with good Yelp reviews that he thinks Aziraphale will like, not too far away -- and the baby takes advantage of his distraction to grab the glasses off his face. Again.

Adam smiles up at Crowley's naked yellow eyes and reaches up to pat him on the cheek, as if in appreciation. Weirdo.

He tries to pry the kid's fingers off the frames, but he seems to have them in some kind of death grip, and Crowley doesn't want to break them. He's only got twenty or thirty pairs, and he's hoping they'll last him a few centuries yet. They don't make this precise style anymore, and he likes them and doesn't quite trust his ability to replicate them himself.

He grits his teeth. "Come on, you little... Antichrist," he says. He's trying for a firm tone, but it comes out sort of wheedling, so he decides to go with it. Gentle, right? That works with babies. "Give daddy back his glasses."

The room suddenly goes a very strange sort of quiet.

Crowley looks up. The angel is standing still, more still than any human could manage. The look on his face is indescribable. 

"_Daddy?_" Aziraphale says, finally.

Crowley shrugs. He hopes he doesn't look nearly as embarrassed as he feels. "It's a joke, angel. I'm definitely not his daddy. I smell a lot better, for one thing. Satan really overdoes it on the brimstone."

The look on Aziraphale's face gets, somehow, even more indescribable. He's still standing unnaturally still, but his hands don't seem to have got the memo about that, and are fluttering chaotically in front of him. "Oh," he says. "Oh, but _Crowley_. I do think you _are_. You're the only father he knows, aren't you? Or you and I, together, are."

Crowley starts to make a dismissive noise, but it dies in his throat as the expression on Aziraphale's face changes to something wondering and frightened and _radiant_. 

"Crowley," he says, and everything written on his face is echoed just as clearly in the tone of his voice. "Crowley, we're his _parents_." 

Crowley stares at Aziraphale.

Aziraphale stares at Crowley.

On Crowley's lap, the Antichrist laughs and drops his glasses.

"Sorry," Crowley mutters as he fumbles them back on. To the kid, or to Aziraphale, or to the universe in general, he's not sure which.

But it's Adam who answers. "Dada," he says, or something that sounds very much like it. "Da!"

Something strange and warm threatens to flare up somewhere deep in Crowley's heart. He's pretty sure it's terror. 

_Oh, Satan_, says the voice in his head. _I think we might all be fucked_.

But Aziraphale, ridiculously, is smiling.

"Fine," Crowley listens to himself say. "But if he ends the world, I'm disowning him."

**

As soon as he seems old enough, Aziraphale begins reading to the boy. It's the only way he knows to get him to sit still. He's such an active little creature, always getting into things, always running around, always wanting to dash outdoors and poke at whatever he finds there. But he loves sitting on Aziraphale's lap, cuddled close against him. He basks in the focus of Aziraphale's attention, bathes in the flow of his words, and in such moments, Aziraphale feels something warm and welcome moving through him, as if he is acting as a conduit between one thing he loves and another. All a part of this arrangement he's somehow committed to, of course, this duty to show Adam everything precious about the world. What has ever been more precious to humanity than words?

He reads things he imagines a child will like: Aesop's fables, Winnie-the-Pooh, tales of old heroes and knights in armor (although it's funny, he thinks, how those never mention the stench of sweat or the awful clinging damp). 

He reads him the Bible, too, the King James version that the humans are so fond of. Not one of his first editions, of course. For these purposes, he uses a decent but unexceptional leather-bound reading copy less than a hundred years old.

Crowley, unsurprisingly, objects to this choice of material, wrinkling his nose up at the book as he passes and recoiling from it theatrically as if he fears it might burn him. Which it probably _would_, to be fair, but only a very little bit. There's no need to be so dramatic about it.

"What are you reading him _that_ for, angel? No telling what that'll go filling his head with."

"It's his family history," Aziraphale says primly, as Adam begins wriggling again in his lap. "He ought to know it. Besides, it's quite beautifully written. Look, we're just coming to your bit."

Crowley makes a scoffing sound. Aziraphale ignores him, turning back to the page. "Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made," he reads, and the scoffing noise turns to a grudgingly pleased one. Crowley does so like his wiles to be appreciated, and perhaps he tends to forget that verse in light of the less flattering ones afterward. 

"Oh, yes," Aziraphale says to Adam. "He was a wily old serpent, indeed! Always getting up to mischief," and Adam returns his fond little smile with a big, happy one.

"It's not like he's old enough to understand, anyway," says Crowley, but after that he leaves them alone.

Aziraphale doesn't read all of it to him, of course. Much of it is too troubling for a small child. Some of it is troubling to _Aziraphale_, although he tries not to think too much about that. 

"And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham," he reads, and stops, and closes his eyes. "No," he says. "Let's not do that one. We'll skip ahead a bit. Look, this chapter has camels! It's been a long time since I've known any camels."

He skips the flood, as well, and the plagues. And Revelation, of course. Best not to give the child ideas.

**

Crowley joins Aziraphale on the bench in the back garden, where he's watching Adam run about in random, energetic circles. He reaches across the angel's body to snag his drink from the table beside them, takes a sip, and makes a face. "Apple juice? Really?"

"Yes. I bought some yesterday. Oh, don't laugh." Crowley isn't, although he _may_ be making an overly amused face. "Adam loves it."

"If apples ever actually tasted like this, we'd all still be stuck in the Garden." He sets the glass down on the grass by their feet.

"It's no Châteauneuf-du-Pape, I'll grant, but it isn't that bad." Aziraphale retrieves the glass, takes a small sip, and returns it to the table. "His palate will eventually mature."

Aziraphale's been saying this since shortly after they started the boy on solid food. It seems to have become an article of faith for him at this point. Despite repeated attempts to introduce Adam to fine dining on their semi-regular trips back to London, Adam has remained devoted to the church of chicken tenders and alphabetti spaghetti. 

Aziraphale's distress at this has been considerable, and Crowley's been subjected to several unhappy monologues about how introducing the boy to the things they love about the world is meant to be the entire point of the plan. Crowley tries hard to sympathize, but hasn't been able to resist pointing out that they haven't been able to introduce the kid to Crowley's favorite things about the world yet, either, as he's still far too young for reckless driving and alcohol.

He is growing fast, though. Look at him there, running around having control of his limbs and everything, when it seems like just a moment ago he was little more than a crying, shitting lump of corporeality. Crowley's never been so acutely aware of how short human lifespans are. A blink, and the kid's suddenly discovered he's meant to be bipedal. Another blink, and he's talking in complete sentences. Of course, this might have something to do with the fact that Crowley very seldom needs to blink, but still, the point stands.

Aziraphale seems to be thinking along similar lines. "He'll be off to school soon," he says.

Crowley's aware. They've already had to fill out _paperwork_. "Yeah," he agrees.

"He'll be making friends," says Aziraphale. "Proper friends, not those delinquents you keep introducing him to in the park. At least, I hope he will. It's important he forges a connection to humanity."

"Yes, angel," Crowley says, with a degree of patience he's certain no mere mortal could achieve. "I know. We've been talking about this for years."

"Only I'm a little worried," Aziraphale says. "Not about his ability to make friends. I'm sure he'll do fine. It's just, well. We've never been terribly good at pretending to be human, have we?"

"Were we meant to be pretending that?" Crowley asks, slouching further down on the bench.

"Well, perhaps we should have been. Crowley..." Aziraphale turns towards him. "What exactly are we meant to say to him when he realizes other children's parents can't do miracles?"

"We tell him other kids' parents aren't as good as his."

"Crowley!"

"What?" Crowley shrugs. "It's the truth."

"I don't know why I bother talking to you sometimes."

"Oh, don't be like that." Crowley sits up a little, or perhaps more accurately, slides into a slightly more upright version of a slouch, and puts on his let's-reassure-Aziraphale voice. "The other kids probably won't even notice, even if he says anything. Humans are good at that. And he's the Antichrist. The world is meant to just accept him."

"Yes, and that's another thing," Aziraphale says, his voice suddenly very quiet. "He's definitely starting to leave his mark on the world. You can feel it, can't you?"

"Feel what?" 

"The love."

Crowley raises an eyebrow.

"His love, Crowley. He leaves it all over everything. The house. This garden. Mr. Bear." This being the cuddly toy Aziraphale won at the village fete and proudly declared to be Adam's first-ever present. "You. Me. I can feel it everywhere."

"Huh," says Crowley, unsure whether he should feel envious or not. "Well, that's good, isn't it? It's what we want."

"Yes. But have you ever stopped to think..." Aziraphale pauses, looking for a moment as if he's going to leave the rest of that sentence where it is and drop the subject entirely.

"What?" Crowley pokes him in the shoulder. "Go on. You can't leave it there."

"It's silly, really. But sometimes, just very occasionally, mind you, I find myself wondering if... If we only love him as we do because that's what he wants from us. Or what he needs from us. If it isn't just him warping reality. Or whatever it is he's meant to do."

Despite not needing to, Crowley blinks. He's never used the word "love" towards the boy, that not being the sort of sentiment anybody really expects from a demon. Which doesn't quite seem right, now that he thinks about it. Aren't you supposed to tell your children that you love them? 

Did Adam put that thought into his head, somehow? Then again, if Adam were influencing him, wouldn't he actually be saying it? 

"Dunno," he says.

"I don't really think so," says Aziraphale, shifting a little closer to him on the bench. "But one can't help having such thoughts, I suppose. Late at night."

"Well, that's what you get for not sleeping," Crowley says. He tries to say it lightly. He thinks maybe he succeeds.

Aziraphale makes a small, rather cute "hmph" sound and turns back to look at Adam. The boy is darting around the garden now with a stick in one hand, waging an imaginary war against an army of invisible enemies. "Pow, pow, _pow_!" he shouts, full of innocent, violent glee.

Aziraphale is biting his lip. "I've also been thinking," he says, "about what happens after."

"After it goes right?" Crowley says. "Or after it goes wrong?"

"Either."

"If it goes right, we'll have saved the world."

"And do you really think that will go unpunished?"

Crowley shifts uncomfortably. "Well. I've been thinking about that, too. Best case scenario, he sends the dog away, and no one has any idea what happened or why it didn't work. They blame the other kid. Satan gives it up as a bad go, or at the very least spends the next few centuries, minimum, trying to figure out a way to make the plan more foolproof next time. Which he probably won't, because he won't know what went wrong."

"And the worst case?"

"Let's not think about that, angel."

"Crowley."

Crowley sighs. "Worst case, Heaven and/or Hell realize exactly what happened and kill all three of us, I suppose. But it might not come to that. Even without fully coming into his own, Adam has power. You said it yourself, you can feel it already. Maybe he'd able to protect his dear old dads."

Aziraphale lets out a sigh of his own. Crowley's not at all sure whether it's a hopeful one or not. "But if we fail..."

"Well, if we fail, we'll have an in with the most powerful entity on the face of the Earth."

"That isn't funny."

"Didn't mean it to be."

Silence falls again.

"I think sometimes," Aziraphale says at last, "about what you said, the night you brought him home. About... about doing away with him."

Crowley sits up in alarm. "_Aziraphale._"

Aziraphale fixes his eyes on the ground. "I remember thinking, I couldn't kill a helpless infant. But an eleven-year-old boy, if it was about to be the end and there was absolutely nothing left to do, if the fate of everything was at stake, I thought... I thought I might be able to."

Crowley stares at him, aghast.

Aziraphale's voice is little more than a whisper now. Crowley doesn't think it's solely because he doesn't want Adam to hear them. "But I can't. I know I can't." He looks up at Crowley again, and the expression in his eyes is so naked, so raw, that Crowley feels a sudden irrational urge to hand over his sunglasses. "Not our _son_."

"No," says Crowley, a rasp in his voice. From across the garden Adam glances over at them, and Crowley finds himself thinking, impossibly, that he has Aziraphale's smile. "Not our son. Whatever happens."

Aziraphale reaches out and takes Crowley's hand. Crowley isn't entirely sure he even knows he's done it. Doesn't dare squeeze, in case he realizes it and stops.

Together they watch their son. Adam has dropped his stick now, and is staring with softly wondering joy at a beetle that's landed on his hand.

"It'll be all right, angel," Crowley says. "Just have a little faith." It comes out much less wry than he intends it to.

The beetle flies away and Adam, smiling, watches it go.

**

Aziraphale still has moments of... Well, not panic. Not really. But moments where, in the middle of some mundane task -- packing Adam's lunch, perhaps, or miracling the breakfast dishes clean -- he'll suddenly find himself pausing and thinking, _What on earth am I doing?_

He's cohabiting with a demon, for Heaven's sake. Or perhaps not for Heaven's sake at all. Perhaps in direct defiance of the will of Heaven. Perhaps even in defiance of the will of the Almighty. And, oh, he hopes not. He can't believe, not truly, that She wants all this to end, or that She requires the transformation of his sweet human boy into a monster. Not the God that created Aziraphale as a vessel for Her holy love. Surely not. But he doesn't _know_, of course. That being the nature of ineffability.

But no matter what God thinks, no matter how the plan plays out, it doesn't change the fact that he's sneaking around behind his superiors' backs, that he calls the Antichrist his son, that all his neighbors assume that he and his ancient adversary are married, or the nearest thing to it.

What surprises him, really, is how unsurprised he's come to feel about it all most of the time. How normal it's all come to feel. How right, even, morally and otherwise. Four years from now, his son might end the world. Every day is a precarious gamble. They're betting their lives and the future of humanity that Heaven won't care enough about Aziraphale's activities to question them, that Hell will accept Crowley's half-fabricated reports on the Dowling child without question. And yet Aziraphale, by and large, is content.

More than content, sometimes. Tonight he is downright _happy_. 

Adam, tired from a long day of school, is in bed, asleep with that blessedly sweet expression on his face, the one Aziraphale treasures so strongly that some nights he can't stop himself from quietly stealing into the boy's room and basking in it.

The weather is beautiful, the sharp autumn crispness of the day giving way to a bracing evening chill ideal for sitting by a warm and crackling fire. The weather has almost always been beautiful, this past year or two. Enough so that Aziraphale sometimes wonders if it's Crowley's doing, or perhaps, somehow, even Adam's. He's fairly sure it isn't his, although he supposes it's not impossible he's influencing things unconsciously, shaping the seasons to reflect his mood. The pathetic fallacy can be considerably less fallacious around beings of their kind.

In his hand is a glass of a rather lovely claret. The strains of Schubert float softly through the room. And sprawled comfortably beside him on the sofa is a smiling, animated Crowley, the firelight glinting in his eyes and deepening the red of his hair as he ducks his head and laughs. He's telling some sort of anecdote about Christopher Marlowe, a stray dog, a prostitute, and a case of mistaken identity. It's utterly absurd, and he's enjoying it immensely. 

"…and so I said, Kit, you can't put that in your play. No one will ever believe it. So he said, well, fine then. Maybe I'll write one about you, instead!"

"I always did think you looked like a Mephistopheles," says Aziraphale. "Didn't I say so once?"

Crowley's head sways back and forth a little, his lips curling up slyly. "Where do you think he got the name?"

They both laugh. Crowley's smile widens, his face scrunching up in a way Aziraphale finds utterly charming.

A feeling of warmth floods through him, the warmth of fire and wine and good company and _home_.

A stray lock of hair has fallen across Crowley's forehead, beautiful, but out of place. Aziraphale sets his wine down, reaches out, and brushes it back.

Crowley freezes. He blinks. And as if changed in that rare flicker of his lids, suddenly his eyes look... different. There's something new in them, or, no, perhaps not entirely new. Not entirely unfamiliar. But something that's closer to the surface than it's usually allowed to come. A vulnerability. A question. A...

Aziraphale yanks his hand back as if he's been burned. He notes, with an odd sort of detachment, that it appears to be trembling. He tucks it between his thigh and the sofa cushion to make it stop.

"Dreadfully sorry," he manages to say. "Don't know what came over me. That was... that was quite inappropriate."

"Angel," says Crowley, and his voice is gentle. As gentle as the lullabies he used to sing to Adam.

"Please do forgive me," Aziraphale says, staring down at his hand, wondering when it will be safe to let it out again.

"_Angel._" Crowley's voice is firm now, as well as gentle. It's a voice that needs his attention. He raises his eyes to meet Crowley's. That voice won't let him do anything else. 

"Aziraphale. We have a _child_ together. Do you really think letting yourself touch me is going to cross a line we haven't already crossed?" 

He isn't wrong, is he? Crowley is so often not wrong.

Into Aziraphale's silence, Crowley says nothing. He's not tempting. Not arguing. Not laughing. He's simply waiting, with that same complex look in his eyes.

The world might be ending soon. Or they might be discovered, punished, separated, not for this, but for everything they've already done together. Six thousand years, and a few more nights like this one might be all they have left.

Aziraphale shifts his leg and sets his hand free. Slowly, he presses his palm to Crowley's cheek. It doesn't tremble at all.

Crowley tilts his face into Aziraphale's hand, more like a cat than a serpent, and the pads of Aziraphale's fingers trace across the mark by his ear, that part of Crowley humans always assume must be merely a tattoo.

Crowley's lips part, and he looks like he's feeling exactly what Aziraphale is. As if he's holding something precious and endangered in his hands and can't bear the thought of letting go.

Well, then. In for a penny.

"I've sometimes wondered," Aziraphale says, with a steadiness that surprises him a little, "what it would be like to kiss you."

"Oh, yeah? Well, hey. Big fan of spreading knowledge, me." The words are casual, but Crowley's voice, soft and rough and hopeful, is anything but.

Aziraphale leans forward. 

Crowley's lips taste like wine and woodsmoke, and they are sublimely, transcendently _kind_.

**

Crowley lies on his back on his bed -- _their_ bed now, even if Aziraphale seldom sleeps in it -- wrapped deliciously in wings, and angel, and the angel's happy, hedonistic love. They've been doing this just long enough now that it ought to feel familiar, but it's still surprising to him, every time. Like a gift he doesn't deserve and has no right to expect, but which is his, nonetheless. 

They're just about to get to the unwrapping... Or no, wait, probably they've done that bit already. The gift exchanging? Possibly something involving Christmas crackers? Ah, forget the metaphor. They're about to start getting to the best part, when Aziraphale suddenly stiffens against him, and not in the way you hope for in this sort of situation.

"What--?" he starts to say, but then he hears it. The turn of a doorknob, the creak of a hinge. 

He moves his wing, just enough to see past it, and...

Yep. There's Adam. Right there in the doorway. _ Fuck._ Whose job was it to lock the door? He has the disturbing feeling it might have been his.

In an instant the two of them are fully clothed and sitting up in bed. He's not sure which one of them did that. Possibly both at once. He tucks his wings away, hears the accompanying _whoosh!_ as Aziraphale does the same.

"You're meant to be in bed," he says, in his best disapproving-father growl.

"I couldn't sleep," says Adam. His voice is its usual cheerful calm, but his eyes are shining with something Crowley can't quite identify. "I wanted to see if I could have some cocoa."

"Yes, of course," says Aziraphale. Even though the instant miracle's left him impeccably dressed, he looks ruffled. Ruffled, and deeply flustered. "I think you'll find there's a nice hot cup for you in the kitchen. Why don't you go and have some, and we'll be out in just a moment, to... to talk to you."

"Okay, Papa," says Adam. He disappears, not bothering to shut the door behind him. Crowley snaps it closed.

"So," he says. "No chance of finishing, then?"

Aziraphale is wringing his hands in front of him. Actually wringing them. "Oh dear. How much do you think he saw? I've heard this sort of thing can be a bit upsetting for children. We're going to have to go and explain."

"Really? _Explain?_ Explain what? Our sex life?'

"Well, yes. Sort of. He must be terribly confused. And embarrassed."

"He didn't look confused. And you're the one who looks embarrassed."

"Well, it's difficult to know how to talk to children about... about this sort of thing."

Crowley makes an annoyed sound. "I don't see why. There's no need to make such a big thing out of it. It's perfectly natural for humans, isn't it? It's the way God made them to reproduce. Well, maybe not quite the way we were doing it. But still. I don't see why they have to be so bloody _weird_ about it."

Aziraphale is staring at him. No, more than staring. He's looking at him with that self-righteous angelic glare that Crowley hasn't seen since the time he tried to amuse Adam by animating his animal crackers. (In fairness, even Crowley has to admit that doing the ones they'd already bitten the heads off of was probably taking it a little too far.) 

"Well," says Aziraphale loftily, "and precisely whose fault is that?"

Is he really? Is he really bringing up...? "Pssh," says Crowley. "They blame me for _everything_. And remind me again who was supposed to be _guarding_ that apple tree?"

"We need to go and talk to him," says Aziraphale, in a tone that brooks no argument.

Crowley sighs and tells his human corporation to stand down on the hormones. It takes a moment to get it to listen to him.

"Come _along_, Crowley!" Aziraphale calls from the bedroom door.

"Fine, fine." And he goes out to talk to the Antichrist about sex. Hopefully this talk is going to involve some sort of lesson about not opening bedroom doors without knocking.

They find their son in the kitchen, matter-of-factly sipping his cocoa. Aziraphale sits down in the chair across from him, looking for all the world like a college professor about to give a particularly challenging lecture. Crowley grabs a chair, flips it, and straddles it backwards. "Well, go on then," he says.

Aziraphale does. "Adam," he says. "Son. We... We want to talk to you about what it is you just saw."

"Speak for yourself," Crowley mutters, but neither of them pays any attention.

Adam sets his cocoa down, and his face lights up with excitement. Okay, whatever reaction Crowley was expecting, that certainly wasn't it.

"That was _so cool_," says Adam. "Can you do it again? I want to see!"

Aziraphale's mouth falls open, which Crowley thinks is hilarious, until he realizes he's doing the exact same thing.

"I..." sputters Aziraphale. "I don't think that's..."

Suddenly, Crowley gets it. "The _wings_, angel. He's talking about the wings." Which, now that he thinks about it were probably covering up everything remotely interesting. They might not have to have this whole conversation yet, after all.

Of course, the conversation they do have to have now may be even more challenging. Adam's grown up taking all their little miracles in stride, but when your parents suddenly sprout wings on you, there are bound to be some awkward questions.

"Yeah" says Adam. "That was brilliant! I didn't know you had wings."

"Yes, well," says Aziraphale. "Surprise! Now, uh, were there any other questions you might have?'

"Oh, yeah," says Adam. "Definitely."

"Yes?" says Aziraphale, visibly bracing himself.

"Am _I_ going to have wings when I grow up?"

Aziraphale looks at Crowley. Crowley stops to think about it. The kid is the son of Satan. Satan has wings. Not very good ones, but definitely wings. Come the End Times, who knows what Adam might end up with? 

"Uh," says Crowley. "Dunno. Maybe?"

"Brilliant!" says Adam. He flashes them a bright, sunny smile and takes an energetic slurp of his cocoa.

"Well, if that's all," says Crowley, "I'm going back to bed."

He's surprised and pleased when, once Adam is asleep, Aziraphale comes back in to finish what they started.

This time, he makes sure he remembers to lock the door. 

**

Aziraphale cradles his mug of tea in his hand, gives it a tiny jolt of miraculous warmth, and takes a fortifying sip before looking up at Crowley, seated across the kitchen table, with a serious expression.

"Eventually we will have to tell him, you know. He's already begun asking questions."

"Fewer questions than I'd expected, to be honest," says Crowley.

"Mmm, yes." Aziraphale has been thinking about this, too, especially since the night, several months ago, when Adam first learned about their wings. He'd been curious about them, touching and stroking them when Aziraphale brought them out again for him to see. Curious enough to request that Crowley bring his out for inspection as well, when he woke in the morning.

But he hadn't asked any of the questions Aziraphale had really expected. Hadn't asked _what are you?_ Or _why are yours white and Dad's are black?_ He'd been much more interested in what they felt like and where they attached and whether they were good for flying.

"I've noticed that myself," Aziraphale continues. "It has occurred to me to wonder if we should be worried by the way he, well, simply accepts these things."

Crowley shrugs. "It's what he's grown up with, angel. The miracles and such. He's used to us being different." Which Aziraphale can't help but think might have been a mistake. Really, he _had_ thought they would let him grow up thinking they were ordinary humans. They just hadn't been any good at it.

Well. What's done is done. "Yes," says Aziraphale. "And yet, I can't help wondering. What if there's more to it? What if...?" But he doesn't really want to say it.

"What if...?" Crowley raises his eyebrows expectantly.

Aziraphale looks down at his tea.

"What if some Satanic part of him feels a little too comfortable with occult powers," says Crowley. "Is that what you mean?"

"It's not _all_ occult," Aziraphale says, with a little sniff. "Some of us are _ethereal_. But, yes."

"Dunno how much difference it makes, one way or the other. It's not like we can do anything about it."

"No, I suppose not." Aziraphale takes another sip of tea and decides to come back to his original point. "But sooner or later we _will_ need to explain."

Crowley waves a hand, but it's a rather subdued gesture, for him. "We have time."

"Three years isn't very much time."

"It's a long time to a human that age," Crowley says. "Anyway, he's doing well, isn't he? No point rocking the boat until we have to."

He _is_ doing well, it's true. He's made friends, a small gang of local children who are always running off to play at each other's houses or go gallivanting through the woods. Adam loves the woods. He loves his friends and his games. He loves stories and being read to, although Aziraphale worries he may consider himself too old for it soon. He loves riding down country lanes in the Bentley, hanging his head out the window like a dog to inhale the world as it passes by. He's even started to make progress in enjoying decent food. He's certainly come around to sushi, even if he does like to tease his Papa about thinking fish fingers are better.

"You may have a point there," Aziraphale says. "All right. Unless he asks more questions, then, perhaps we _should_ wait a while before we tell Adam who he really is."

At this point, Adam, whose timing when it comes to barging in unannounced has clearly not improved, comes bursting through the kitchen door, stops, looks at them with mild curiosity, and asks, "Tell me _what_ about who I am?"

"Of bloody _course_," Crowley groans. 

"I thought you were at your friend's house?" Aziraphale says, desperately stalling for time. "Which one was it again? Ryan? Robert?"

"Renee," says Adam. "And I was. But her mum had a headache and told us all to go home. Apparently we make too much noise."

"Really?" says Crowley, dryly, as the kitchen door stops swinging behind Adam and closes with a bang. "Hadn't noticed."

"What is it you were going to tell me?" says Adam.

Aziraphale looks at Crowley. Crowley sighs. "Yes, all right, looks like we're doing this now. Hooray. Sit down, son." He gestures to the chair next to him.

Adam sits, and looks at both of them with a patient, expectant air.

"Yes," says Aziraphale. "Right then. Well. Might as well get to it." 

He draws a deep breath and glances at Crowley, who shows no indication of offering to help.

"Adam," Aziraphale says. "I'm sure this will come as a terrible shock to you, but perhaps it _is_ time for you to know." He lays a hand across one of Adam's where it rests atop the table. "Crowley and I... Well, we aren't your real parents." Adam tilts his head a little, looking surprised, and Aziraphale rushes to continue. "No, no, that isn't the way to say it at all. We _are _your parents, of course we are. We raised you, after all, from the day you arrived on this earth, and we love you, so very much. But we didn't... Well, we didn't _make_ you. You see?"

Adam blinks. "Yeah, I kind of figured that."

It takes a moment for Aziraphale to recover enough to respond. "Really?" he manages, at last.

"Well, yeah. I mean, you're both boys."

Crowley laughs. "At least we know we don't have to give him _that_ part of the sex talk," he says to Aziraphale. He turns to Adam, his expression growing a little softer. "That's really not the problem, though. Not for us."

"Oh," says Adam, looking only slightly confused. 

"We're not really boys at all," says Aziraphale. "Well, men. Or women. We aren't human."

"But you know that," says Crowley. "Don't you?" His voice is gentle, in that way it can unexpectedly be sometimes. "You've seen our wings. You've seen the things we can do."

"Yeah," says Adam. "It's really cool."

"You see, Crowley?" Aziraphale says, feeling a desperate need to inject a bit of humorous relief to the proceedings. "At least _someone_ thinks I'm 'cool'."

Crowley rolls his eyes. He's wearing his glasses at the moment, so it's hard to tell, but Aziraphale always knows.

"You must have wondered what we are," Aziraphale says to Adam. "Well, I--" He puts a hand to his chest. "--am an angel. And your other father here--" He touches Crowley's hand. "Is... Well. He was once an angel, too."

Crowley makes a little hissing sound. "You can say the word." He slowly takes his glasses off and looks at Adam, who meets his familiar yellow gaze calmly. "Demon. I'm a demon."

"But you mustn't be afraid of him," Aziraphale adds quickly.

Adam gives him an odd look. "Why would I be afraid of Dad?"

"Oh, I'm very scary," says Crowley, and gives Adam a smile with a hint of fang in it. But there's nothing frightening in it at all.

Adam laughs.

"I must say," says Aziraphale, feeling more than a little taken aback. "You don't seem as surprised as I expected."

Adam shrugs. "Well, it just makes sense, doesn't it? Really, I think I always knew. I mean, Dad calls you 'angel' all the time." He looks at Crowley. "And Papa calls you things like 'foul fiend' a lot."

"I do not!"

"You called him that yesterday, when he burned lunch."

"Well, I... I meant it affectionately!"

Crowley laughs. "He's got us dead to rights, angel. We're raising a clever boy."

"So," Adam says, "was I just adopted, then? Or is one of you is my actual dad? I mean, my..." He seems to be trying to remember the word. "My biological dad."

"No," says Crowley. "Angels and demons aren't usually capable of having kids that way."

"Oh," says Adam. "I always wondered, if maybe I had a mum somewhere."

Aziraphale suddenly finds himself wondering the same thing. He casts Crowley a questioning look.

"I don't think you do," Crowley says. "Never thought to ask, though. Honestly, I didn't want to know the details."

"So," says Adam. "I'm adopted, and you don't know who my real mum and dad are. That's all right." He smiles at them. It's a sweet, reassuring smile. "I don't mind."

"Ah, well, about that," says Aziraphale.

"Yeeeeah," says Crowley. "We... kind of might actually know who your father is."

A long moment passes in silence. Finally, Adam says, "Who is it, then?"

"It's..." Azirphale's voice drops to a mutter. "Satan," he says, almost inaudibly, even to his own ears.

"Sorry, what?" says Adam.

"He said 'Satan,'" says Crowley.

"What, like the devil?"

"Yes," says Aziraphale. "Exactly like that."

"My dad is the devil?" Adam looks more interested by this than appalled. Aziraphale can't decide whether that's a good or a bad thing.

"No," says Crowley. "Your _dad_ is a demon. Your papa is an angel. The creature that _made_ you is Satan."

"OK," says Adam. "But... why? I mean, why would the devil want a kid?"

"He..." Aziraphale hesitates. He feels he ought to tread carefully here. Oh, he wishes he'd had time to discuss how to handle this with Crowley beforehand. "It wasn't because he wanted a child," he says. "He wanted to... Well, to use you. For evil ends. He wanted you to grow up evil. To hate the world enough that you'd want to destroy it."

"You deserve better than that, Adam," Crowley says, his voice rough with conviction.

"You deserve _so_ much better than that," Aziraphale agrees. "And so does the world. So we took you from him."

"_I_ took you," Crowley says.

"Crowley took you," Aziraphale says, "and brought you to me. And we've tried to give you a good home. To show you how lovely the world truly is. And you've seen that, haven't you? You've been enjoying yourself?"

Adam's face lights up. "Oh, yeah! I mean, today was brilliant. We found a dead hedgehog in Renee's back garden, and we got to spend _ages_ poking it with sticks and things before her mum made us stop. And then her dad made cake, and I got to have _two_ pieces, and I thought up this really brilliant game to play with a football and a jump rope and some pans from the kitchen. And then her mum made us leave, but it was fine, because Dad said he'd take me out for a drive tonight, anyway, and we could get ice cream. And tomorrow we're going to Ryan's house, and he just got the new Super Alien Fighter game, and it's going to be _amazing_."

They both just sit there for a moment staring at the boy. And then Aziraphale finds himself on his feet, then kneeling on the floor, his arms around his son. Crowley leans over and strokes the boy's hair.

Adam squirms. "Yeesh. Dad! Papa! Stop it!"

"Sorry," says Aziraphale, not letting go. "We just love you so much."

"Yeah," says Crowley, and Aziraphale thinks he can see a reflection of the same loving hope that he feels, somewhere in the glint of Crowley's golden eyes. 

"Hey," says Adam. "Is that what 'Antichrist' means? Is that a word that means you come from the devil?"

As he lets go of Adam, Aziraphale looks up at Crowley and narrows his eyes. "I thought you'd stopped calling him that?"

"Eh," Crowley says. "It's just a nickname. It doesn't have to mean anything."

"OK," says Adam, seeming to accept this, or perhaps simply not to care very much. "Can I go back outside and play in the garden now?"

"'Course you can," says Crowley. "It's all yours, that garden."

Adam grins. He gives Crowley a hug, and then Aziraphale, and before either can say anything more, he's out the door, leaving it to slam behind him again.

"That went well," says Crowley. "I think?"

"We didn't tell him about the dog," Aziraphale says, standing up.

Crowley stands as well, and shrugs, a movement that starts in his shoulders and ends, improbably, in his hips. "Time for that later, I suppose."

"Yes." Aziraphale hesitates. "Do you think he understood?"

"Hard to say what goes on in his head. But he seems all right? Don't you think?" Crowley's voice is equal parts uncertainty and hope.

"Yes," Aziraphale says.

A moment passes in silence.

Aziraphale smiles. "Did he say something about going out for ice cream?"

Crowley's lips twitch upwards. "Fine, angel," he says. "We can all go out together."


	3. Young Man, We Raised You Better Than to Go About Ending the World

Adam's tenth birthday is _awesome_. All his friends are there, even Renee, who moved away to Birmingham last year, making him wonder if he'd ever get to see her again. There are two kinds of cake, and three kinds of ice cream. He gets all sorts of brilliant presents, including books with adventure stories and pictures of foreign places he wants to see for for himself someday, and a new bike (or possibly a "velocipede" -- Adam isn't really sure of the difference), and a chemistry set his dad tells him he can use to make stink bombs with, as long as he doesn't tell his papa.

And Papa does his magic act, which is _amazing_. Well, no, really it's terrible, but it's funny. Maybe the funniest thing Adam's ever seen. Everyone laughs, even though Adam thinks he's probably the only one who really gets the joke, and Papa looks happy about having entertained them all so well.

It's a great day. He doesn't want it to end.

But even when it does, when he's tucked up in bed with all his new presents around him (well, except for the bike, which has to stay outside), he still has a good feeling. An interesting, new feeling. Like something is coming. Something just around the corner, now. Something that will let him be what he's always known, deep down in his heart, he is supposed to be.

Adam smiles, and closes his eyes, and dreams of wings.

**

Six months before the Possible End of Everything Remotely Fun, they tell him about the hellhound.

Or, rather they tell him about the hellhound for the first time. Crowley is well aware that sometimes one has to tell the boy things three or four times before he bothers to remember them. Especially if those things have to do with cleaning his room or doing his homework. Not that Crowley doesn't sympathize. He hates doing what he's told, too. It's one the main reasons why he's here at all, and not still prancing about up in Heaven. Or skulking about down in Hell, for that matter. 

But this is _important_. So. He puts on his most serious, listen-to-me-I'm-your-dad voice. "When the dog shows up, you just send it away. Right? That's all you have to do. Don't pet it. For Sata-- for humanity's sake, _don't name it_. Just say, 'Nope, sorry, not interested in any hellbeasts today, thanks,' and tell it to _go away_."

"You don't actually have to say that first part," Aziraphale puts in helpfully.

"Just tell it to _go away_," Crowley repeats. "Got it?"

"Yeah," says Adam. But he's got a thoughtful expression on his face. One Crowley doesn't trust at all. It's the same expression he gets right before talking Aziraphale into letting him eat his dessert before his meal.

"What?" Crowley says.

"Well..." Adam looks at him with big, wide, blue eyes. "But I _want_ a dog."

They both stare at him for a moment. They look at each other. They look back at Adam.

"You can have a dog," they both say at once.

"A nice, normal, _ordinary_ dog," Aziraphale says. 

"Better'n any hellhound," Crowley says. "One that meets all your dog-owning needs."

Adam beams at them. "Brilliant! You're the best parents ever. I've always said so."

The next day, Adam has a dog. Not quite the one Crowley was imagining. Probably not the one Adam was imagining, either, which Crowley finds mildly worrying. (Not that he thinks there will be a problem. Not that he doesn't trust his son. But, really, why tempt fate when there are so many safer and more interesting things to tempt?) But of course Aziraphale insists they adopt a needy shelter dog instead of the scrappy, clever little puppy that Crowley and Adam both were expecting. Of course he does.

A needy shelter dog with a ragged coat and a nervous bark and less brains than God gave a goldfish. 

Apparently its given name is Miss Sparkle, which Aziraphale thinks is adorable and Crowley decides instantly is simply _not on_. He tries to rename it Cerberus, though it seems he's the only one who thinks that's funny. Maybe because he's the only one who's actually met Cerberus. Adam mostly just calls it Dog.

Crowley resolves to dislike the thing immediately, no matter how often it gives him the soft-brown-eyes treatment, or how uncomfortably that expression reminds him of Aziraphale in his more manipulative moments. 

But Adam loves it, anyway. Adam wrestles with it in the garden, and takes it out for romps in the woods, and gathers around it with his little friends and lets them take turns rubbing its belly while it whines in mindless, stupid doggy pleasure.

And if, as time goes on, this perfectly ordinary mutt seems to get a little cuter, and a little smarter, and a little more like what Adam clearly wants from a dog, both of his parents carefully refrain from pointing it out.

**

Aziraphale is trying to read in bed. Ordinarily, this is far from difficult for him, but he's run his eyes over the same paragraph five times now, and he still has no idea what it says.

Three months left, now. Three months. No time at all.

He sets the book aside and turns to face Crowley, who opens his eyes and looks at him with a soft, tired expression.

"Not asleep yet, then?" Aziraphale says.

"Nah."

Aziraphale wants to leave it there. Wants to kiss him and tell him goodnight and go out to the kitchen for a soothing cup of tea, and leave the demon to his dreams. He knows it upsets Crowley when he frets, no matter how much Crowley tries not to show it. He likes to think he's done much less of it over the past few years. That he's learned to relax, to accept the comforts of the present and not think too much about the possibility of the end, or about whether they're doing the right thing.

But there are things he _has_ to think about now. Or will have to, entirely too soon. "What will we do," he says, feeling as if the words are being ripped from him by something far outside himself, "when it's all over? If everything goes well?"

Crowley groans. "Angel, we've been _over_ this."

"No, we haven't," he says. "Not the parts I mean. What will _we_ do, Crowley?" 

Crowley props himself up slightly on an elbow, and regards Aziraphale carefully.

"We finish raising the boy," he says.

"Well, of course we finish raising the boy! But after _that_?"

Crowley simply looks at him, his expression confused, as if he hasn't understood the question.

He's understood it. Aziraphale knows he has. "We can't go on like this forever," Aziraphale says. He isn't choking on the words. He's _not_. "You know we can't. Eventually they'd realize. Your side would, or mine."

"We're on each other's side," Crowley says, quietly enough that for a second Aziraphale isn't even certain he's heard it. 

But he has. He has to close his eyes for a moment, before he's able to go on. "They can't know that. But they will. Even if they don't figure it out for a while, once Adam grows up and leaves us, or once he's..." He swallows. There's a tightness in his chest that feels terribly, terribly human. "Once he's _gone_. We won't be able to stay here. We'll have to go back to pretending we don't like each other."

Crowley licks his lips. For a second, his tongue isn't entirely human. A sign of nervousness, Aziraphale knows, that loss of control. Nervousness, or distress. But Crowley smiles at him. "Well," he says. "Only when they're looking. Could be fun, really. Sneaking around behind their backs. Might be kind of sexy. Clandestine canoodling." He says this last phrase with the flippant over-enunciation he uses when he's trying to amuse himself, but Aziraphale can tell it's not working.

Aziraphale shakes his head. He can't answer. He can't. What can he possibly say?

He doesn't want to lose this. He's been happy here, with Crowley. Happier than he ought to be. Happy with Crowley's constant presence. With Crowley's morning breath and his terrible be-bop albums, and his rambling tirades on trivial subjects, and his too-charming smile. With the causal, intimate way he's taken to kissing Aziraphale on the cheek, on the forehead, on the mouth, for no reason at all. With the caress of Crowley's feathers against his bare skin and the warm press of his body against Aziraphale's and...

It won't work. The day will come, in three months or a decade or eighty years that he'll lose all of this and nothing will ever be the same again. They'll lose their son. Their -- if all goes according to plan -- very nearly human son, who will never be as immortal as them. They'll lose each other. They'll lose the home they've made. It might well be worse than never having had any of it at all. 

Aziraphale thinks that the Apocalypse might almost be preferable, and immediately hates himself for the thought.

Crowley is stirring uncomfortably, starting to look away.

"This was probably a bad idea," Aziraphale finds himself blurting out. "This letting ourselves become... whatever it is we are." _Married_, or might-as-well-be. He's never contradicted the humans for assuming it. He's come, almost, to believe it's true himself. What an utterly ludicrous thought. What a sickening, impossible, torment of a joke, for an angel and a demon.

Crowley goes still. The look in his eyes sends a stab of pain through Aziraphale, somewhere that has nothing to do with his corporeal form. "A bad idea," he says. His voice is cold and flat and empty.

"I didn't mean it like that!" Aziraphale says, but Crowley is turning away from him. He pounds at the pillow under his head and curls up facing the wall, the lean lines of his body taut and furious.

"I didn't mean it like that!" he cries, again. But he's ruined it. He's ruined it all. He's lost it all, now, even before he had to. 

There are tears on his face. He can't remember the last time that happened. He thinks perhaps it was when the Library of Alexandria burned.

"They'll find out, Crowley," he says, but the quiet, broken voice coming from him is aimed as much at himself as it is at Crowley. "Even if we get away with everything else, if we try to go on like this for too long, Heaven will find out. They'll recall me, and I'll never see you again!" His voice cracks entirely halfway through the last sentence. He barely notices.

Crowley does. Crowley turns around. Crowley touches his face. He doesn't look angry any more. He looks tired, and sad, and scared. And kind. So terribly, terribly kind. "We'll figure something out, angel," he says. "I promise, we will. Let's just try to get through the end of the world first. All right?"

He has no reason to believe Crowley. No reason to believe anything will be all right.

He takes a leap of faith.

"All right," he says, and the demon kisses him. It feels like a blessing.

They hold each other until the sun comes up.

Three months left to go.

**

The day of his birthday, it's just Adam and his parents. And a second whole cake, a fancy one his papa got from a bakery in the city, with lots of swirly frosting. Papa says it's a second birthday cake, because he should have one on his real birthday, and they ate most of the first one yesterday with his friends. Papa calls it his congratulations-for-not-ending-the-world cake. He and Dad got into quite an argument over whether he's allowed to eat any before he saves the world or not. Dad said some things, in that half-kidding way of his, about not being allowed to have the cake until he earns it. Papa said that if things go wrong, he might not get the chance after.

Papa's scared. So is Dad. They're both smiling, trying to hide it, trying to act like everything is normal, but Adam can tell. 

They've been scared for a while now. He knows. He hears them talking, sometimes. Little pieces of conversations when they think he's asleep, or outside, or not paying attention. He knows they're scared of losing things: him, each other, the world.

He wants to tell them it'll be okay, but when he looks up from the last of his cake, they're busy kissing. A _lot_ of kissing, as if they think they might not get the chance to do it again, ever, and Adam guesses that makes sense, but do they have to do it in front of _him_?

He looks away, squirming in his seat at the kitchen table, and thinks about asking if he can at least go outside and play in the garden with Dog, since they don't know how much longer any of this is going to take, when he hears it.

Or... not _hears_ it, exactly. It's a feeling, at first. A strangely natural, almost familiar feeling. Something that seems so much a part of him that he's not sure he'd even have noticed it if he weren't expecting something to happen.

_You are special_, the feeling tells him, and it's something he's known all his life, but it's still nice to hear. _Everything is yours_, it tells him. _Everything is waiting_.

Outside the door, there's a growl. Dreamily, Adam stands up. He opens the door. He steps out.

The dog is there. It stares at him. It's not Adam's sort of dog, really. It's big and toothy and its eyes are red, and what color is _that_ for a dog's eyes? But he could change it. He's pretty sure he could.

It looks at him like it knows him, and some part of him reaches out for it. He knows it, too. It feels like a part of him. 

His parents didn't tell him it would feel this _right_.

He can hear them behind him now, saying something to him, but he's not really listening. It's the sound of a small, frightened whine that finally catches his attention. He looks down to see Dog pressed against his side. She's shaking, terrified of the hellhound, but she's with him.

His sweet little Dog, who tries to protect him from cats, and the postman, and blowing plastic bags in the street. Dog, constant companion to him and friend to everyone he likes. Dog, who Papa saved from the shelter, who Dad sneaks treats to under the table when he thinks no one is looking. Dog, who almost learned a trick for him once. 

She's barking now, telling the hellhound to go away. It snarls at her. He's the only one who can tell it that.

_Your power_, the feeling tells him. _All yours._

He can feel it. Feel the entire world trembling. Getting ready. It's eager to obey him. It will do so many tricks for him. So much more than any old Dog could ever manage.

_Yours_, says the feeling. _To do with as you like. Your birthright_.

He doesn't want to be the Son of Satan. He's never really liked that idea. It doesn't feel _right_.

_Power is your birthright_, says the feeling, and that...

That _does_ feel right. Never mind Satan, wherever he is. He's the son of an _angel_. And a _demon_. His whole life he's been waiting to grow up and be like them, and he won't, will he, if he sends the hellhound away. He'll never have miracles, not real ones he can do with a snap of his fingers. He'll never have wings.

Papa might have to go away, for reasons he still doesn't understand, and Adam won't be able to _help_.

He wants to be able to help.

The hellhound pants at him, and its lips pull back into something that might be a smile, if it weren't quite so full of teeth.

Adam feels a hand clutching his right shoulder. Another comes to rest on his left. He startles at the touch. He could make it go away. He almost does. But the beating sound of unfurling wings stops him.

He parents are behind him. He can see them as they truly are.

"Adam," says his papa, and the angel's voice is tight with fear, but full of certainty. "Send it away. Whatever it's telling you, whatever it's offering you, it isn't anything you need. It isn't anything you _are_. I know. I _know_ you, as Satan never will. You are _our_ son, not his. You have a good soul, and this creature represents nothing but destruction and evil. You can send it away."

"You don't have to do what you're told," his dad says, through gritted teeth, "Just because someone creates you, that doesn't mean they get to tell you what you are. Doesn't mean you have to _obey_. All your life, you've just sort of accepted things, but you get to question this. You get to _choose_."

"You can choose power, Adam," says Papa. "Or you can choose us. Choose the world. The woods, your dog, your friends. Fish fingers and sushi. Cake and ice cream. Football and feeding ducks in the park and those 'video games' you like. You might be able to hold onto some of that for yourself, if you choose the power instead. But it won't be the _same_. And it will be over for everyone else. Forever."

"Whatever happens," says Dad, "and I mean it, _whatever_ happens, even if you end the world, we love you. We will always love you. But, please. For us. For the world. Please, _don't_."

Adam looks down at Dog, trembling by his side. He looks around at the garden, at the green of Dad's plants, the blue of the sky. He turns his head to look first at Papa, then at Dad. They don't look at all human, he thinks at first, but he blinks, and looks again, and thinks instead that they've never looked _more_ human. Wings and all.

He feels a little stab of regret.

"Sorry," he says, and he senses his parents tensing up behind him. "But I think you're going to have to go away now."

The hellhound cocks its head at him, looking, for a moment, almost exactly like Dog when he pretends to throw her ball but instead keeps it hidden in his hand.

"Go away," he says. It's a voice with no power in it.

But the hellhound goes.

**

"What do you mean," a voice great and terrifying rings out across the Pits of Hell. "What do you mean, IT CAME BACK?"

**

Adam can still feel reality trembling. It's had a near miss, and it still doesn't quite know what happened, or what to do next.

He's not exactly sure about that, either. He feels a little shaky. But it's okay. His parents are here to hold him up. All at once, there are arms and wings all around him, and kisses being pressed to his forehead, which, come on, he's not a _baby_, but he doesn't really mind very much. It's not like there's anyone around to see. Not yet.

They're telling him how proud of him they are and how much they love him, and Papa is saying "thank God," over and over and Dad is saying "thank _Adam_," and then Papa is too,and Dog is licking his hand like she's trying to lick a hole in it, and reality is still trying to whisper in his ear, just a little, and it's all becoming just a bit _much_. 

"Can I have some more cake now?" he says.

"You can have anything you want," says Dad.

They sit outside, on the bench in the garden, and eat more cake. Even Dog gets a little.

Something is still coming. Adam can feel it. But for right now, well. It's his birthday, and he has cake.

He pops a frosting flower into his mouth and waits.

**

An hour later, the three of them are kicking a football around in the garden. Or rather, Adam is kicking it around and his parents are watching and sometimes shouting words of encouragement, some of which are pretty funny, if only because Papa has never understood football at all.

Mostly, though, he's just killing time. Or, well, not killing time. Killing time is probably exactly what he decided _not _to do. Passing the time, though. Until...

There's a flash of lightning, and a man in a fancy suit is standing in front of him. Before Adam can take in much more about him, his parents are suddenly in the way, jostling each other in their hurry to get him behind them. Their wings are out again. One of Papa's accidentally brushes him across the face, and he has to spit a bit of feather out of his mouth.

The man -- or whatever he is -- cranes his neck to look between them at Adam. "Hello there," he says, and he has the worst smile Adam has ever seen. It's the smile adults give you when they think you're stupid, and it looks like it never leaves his face. "You must be our little troublemaker."

Something growls, and Adam looks around for Dog. He sees her tail disappearing into a bush, hiding. She's more afraid of this weird whatever-he-is than she was of the hellhound. 

The growling noise, it turns out, is Dad. The stranger gives him a disgusted look, and turns to Papa.

"So," he says in a big, fake, cheery American voice. "_This_ is where you've been hiding out."

Papa's wings flutter and still. He stands very straight. Adam thinks he looks really brave. "How did you find us?" he says.

The probably-not-really-an-American makes a scoffing sound. "Hellhounds talk, y'know. Well, not talk, exactly, but... They do something. I don't know. Demon stuff. Anyway, turns out, you can find out where they've been!"

"And you know this... how?" Papa says.

Dad says a really bad word. "Back channels to Hell," he says. "I should have known."

"I don't know what you're talking about," says the man. "There are no back channels to Hell."

"Right," says Dad. Adam can't see Papa's face very well, but he thinks he looks disappointed.

The man looks around the garden. At the house. He doesn't look like he thinks very much of it.

"You know, when we started having trouble keeping track of you," he says to Papa, "we figured, okay, he's probably out being diligent. Keeping an eye on the Antichrist, that sort of thing. Well, that's what Michael said. I said, hey, he's probably out stuffing his face with as much matter as he can before it's gone. Good thing we didn't place any bets on that. Because we never would have expected..." He looks like he wants to spit on them. "..._this_. Seriously, Aziraphale. What the hell? We never even got to gather the Horsemen!"

Adam does _not_ like this man talking to his papa that way. No matter who he is. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he can feel something stirring. It's not quite ready yet. But it might be, soon.

"Papa," he says. "Who is this?" He remembers snatches of conversations, more things his Papa's said when he didn't think Adam was listening. "Is he your boss?"

"This," says Papa, "is the Archangel Gabriel."

"Otherwise known as the great celestial wanker," says Dad.

"He is my immediate superior. Or was. I rather think I might have resigned my employment. Gabriel, this is my son, Adam."

"He's not your son, you idiot," says Gabriel.

"Hey!" says Adam. Something stirs a little stronger.

"He's Satan's son. He's meant to be starting the end right now. But you MESSED IT ALL UP!" 

"No," says Papa.

"No?" Gabriel gives him a dangerous look. "What do you mean, 'no?'"

"I mean no," says Papa. "I mean, I don't think he _is_ meant to be ending the world. I can't believe that is the Almighty's plan. If it were, I don't believe She would have let us stop it. Goodness knows, there were enough ways we could have failed. We really weren't terribly competent parents."

"We?" says Gabriel. "You and the _demon_? Urgh. It's worse than I thought." He looks like he wants to throw up. So does Adam, a little, at the expression on his face. "Anyway, what do you mean, it's not the plan? Of _course_ it's the plan. It's the Great Plan, Aziraphale!"

"Your plan," says Dad. "Doesn't mean it's Hers."

For a second, Gabriel actually looks surprised. Maybe even worried. Then he sneers. "You shut your God-damned mouth, you disgusting, worthless _demon_. You've already done more than enough, sullying one of God's own with your... with your _filth_." He looks at Papa and sniffs. "Oh, God, I can _smell_ him on you. Aziraphale, what the fuck have you _done_?"

Adam feels his lips pinch together. No one uses words like that with his Papa. _No one_.

Papa straightens himself even more, and lifts up his chin. He looks exactly the same as he always does, except for the wings. Just fussy, silly, fluffy-haired old Papa. But somehow, he also seems to be something _more_. He almost seems to be glowing.

"You will not speak that way," he says, in a voice clearer and stronger than Adam has ever heard from him, "about the father of my child." 

Dad grins. He grins wider than it ought to be possible for a human face to grin, and he laughs in Gabriel's face. 

Adam steps forward. Dad puts a hand on his shoulder, as if about to try to hold him back, but Adam gives him a look, and he lets go.

"Yes," Adam says. "Don't talk like that about my Dad."

The stirring gets stronger. Stronger. It's just about ready. 

"I told you, _boy_," Gabriel says. "That's not your father."

Dad gasps and falls to his knees. "Oh no," he says, his voice a scary, ragged whisper. "Oh no."

Gabriel smiles, a smug, horrible smile. "_That's_ your father," he says.

And the garden erupts in a spray of soil and flame.

Dad and Papa flinch away. Even Gabriel takes a step back.

Adam stands where he is, and looks up into his creator's face.

He's quite big. Adam supposes that's something. The red skin and the horns and everything are pretty cool. But he doesn't really see the resemblance.

"MY SON," says the creature as he rises from the hole in the garden. "YOU HAVE DISAPPOINTED ME."

Behind him, Gabriel laughs. Faintly, he can hear Papa telling Dad to do something.

But this isn't theirs to do.

_Now_. Now is the time. He can feel it. Can feel reality listening to him. It's so frustrated. So eager. It's been waiting for him for a long, long time. Waiting for him to tell it what to do. Waiting for him to tell it what gets to be real and what doesn't. It hasn't quite understood yet that he's had to turn it down. 

Maybe because he doesn't have to turn it down.

_Now._

"You're not my dad," he says, and reality listens. "My dad's a demon. And my papa's an angel. But you're not _anything_ to me. I've never even met you before. You've never been there when I needed you. No bedtime stories, no birthday cake. You never sang me to sleep when I was a baby, or packed me a lunch, or made me a cup of cocoa, or _anything_. You never even tried." Adam takes a slow, sure breath. "You're not my father."

He turns his back on Satan. "_You_," he says. Dad, still on his knees, looks up at him. Papa, still standing straight, looks down. "You're my real parents. You always have been."

Behind him, Satan screams. But he doesn't care, because Satan's not his dad.

"Son," breathes Papa, and the look on his face is glowing again. But in a different way this time.

"Son," Dad grates out, and rises to his feet, and holds out his arms.

Adam closes his eyes for a moment, and reaches out for something. Something that's a part of him. Something that's always been a part of him, now.

Adam unfolds his wings.

Dad rips off his glasses, as if he thinks they're making him see things. Papa whispers something that sounds like it might be a prayer.

Adam smiles. He pulls his wings forward and twists around a little to see. They're silver-gray, almost shiny in the light of the afternoon sun. "_Cool_," he says.

He turns around. Satan is steaming. Literally. Clouds of ash and vapor are pouring off of him. Gabriel is standing there, sputtering. "You... you can't..."

"I just did," Adam says. "You know what I just did."

Gabriel looks afraid. Adam doesn't like making him look afraid, but it might be very useful.

He gives the devil and the archangel a very serious look. "I'm not yours," he says. "I'm something else. Something new, that's never been before. Even _I_ don't know what I can do yet. But I will find out, if you don't _leave my family alone._"

The Devil lets out a deep, screeching cry of frustration. The archangel shudders. And then they're gone.

A quiet breeze blows through the garden. Somewhere, a bird sings. "C'mere, Dog," he says, and Dog comes out of the bush she's been hiding in and licks his hand.

"_Adam_," says his Papa. "Oh, my boy."

And they're hugging him again, only this time there are even more wings involved. That gets a little hard to deal with, actually, so he tucks his away again, a little reluctantly.

So do his parents, when they finally let him go, but that takes a while.

"Didn't know you could do that," says Dad, at last. "I thought when you sent the dog away, that would probably be it. No more power."

Adam shrugs. "I _didn't_ have any power, not really. But the world hadn't figured it out yet. It still wanted to listen to me. Just once. So I let it."

"And now?" says Papa. "Do you still...?"

Adam looks over to where Satan's made a mess of their garden. It shouldn't be all torn up like that. He expects it to be different.

He snaps his fingers, and the garden is beautiful again.

"Awesome!" He smiles.

Papa is looking at him a little nervously. "Don't worry," Adam says. "That wasn't the same sort of thing at all. I just... can do what you do, now. Because I'm your kid." He stops, and thinks for a moment, and laughs. "You know all those books you gave me? Remember the one with the genie? I always thought, if a genie gave you a wish, why wouldn't you wish for more wishes?"

His dad throws back his head and laughs. "That's my boy!"

"_Our_ boy," Papa says. "Our wonderful, wonderful boy." There are tears in his eyes. The sight brings Adam up short.

"Come on, Papa, you don't need to _cry_. Everything's going to be okay now. I frightened them off. They won't come back. You'll never have to leave us. We can be a family forever."

"Forever," Papa says, like it's a word he's never heard before.

"_Forever_," says Dad, like it's a word he's been thinking about for a really long time.

"We can do whatever we want now," says Adam.

Papa reaches out and takes Dad's hand. Probably they're going to get mushy again, but Adam figures they're allowed.

"What shall we do, then, my love?" he says.

"You heard the boy. Whatever we want."

"Oh!" says Adam. "I've got an absolutely _brilliant_ idea!"

"What's that?" says Dad.

"Wellll," says Adam. He's trying not to laugh, because he's not joking. Not entirely. "You could make me a baby brother. Or a sister. I mean, if I'm your kid--" He flashes his new wings out and back in again, just because he can. Just to check that they're still there. "--then that must mean you actually can. Somehow. Right?"

"Oh, _goodness_," says Papa. He's actually blushing. It's sort of hilarious. "Cheeky boy!"

Dad waggles his eyebrows at him. "Could be fun trying."

Papa slaps his arm. "Stop it, you old serpent." But he's happy. He looks almost giddy with happiness. And the look Dad is giving both of them now is pure, soppy love. 

Adam is glad. He's glad to have his family happy like this.

But he's also still a kid. And it's his birthday. And there are other things he wants today, too.

"Can I go and play with my friends now?" he says.

"Of course," his parents tell him. They still sound a little dazed, but they'll get over it. "Of course you can."

Adam lets them both give him one more hug, and whistles for Dog to follow him.

Humming happily to himself, Adam leaves the garden and walks out into the world.

Behind him, his parents fall into each other's arms.

They stay there for a very, very long time.


End file.
